Everywhere I go I find a pal

Peter Weinschenk, Editor, The Record-Review

I held on as if for dear life. My breath quickened. My attention focused. I forgot about the rest of the world.

This was me on Saturday attempting to buff finish my jazz guitar, years in the making, on a homemade buffer.

I pushed the guitar back into a 14-inch Canton cotton buffer wheel loaded up with Minerza compound and spinning at 900 revolutions per minute. Knowing that the machine could, as I had been warned in numerous videos, throw the guitar into my shop ceiling, I applied only the lightest pressure. Thankfully, the guitar, kept below the buffer wheel’s center line, stayed where it was supposed to.

I adopted a number of Ninja poses to carefully sweep the guitar, already hand buffed to a pretty high gloss, across the cotton wheel. I slowly gained some confidence. I wouldn’t say I knew what I was doing. I was just doing.

In time, however, I saw this amazing, glowing and utterly clear finish emerge from a somewhat cloudy hand polish job. It was like cleaning a pair of well-smudged up reading glasses.

There are parts of the guitar that I didn’t feel I could polish safely on the pedestal buffer. Instead, I used a hand drill with a small buffing wheel to deal with these areas.

In the end, I was emotionally exhausted. I subjected my guitar to a potentially fatal polishing and ended up with a great result.

I am seeing the end of my guitar building project. It’s all quite exciting.

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As I write this, the House of Representatives is voting to impeach President Trump (again) in the wake of last week’s awful U.S. Capitol attack.

Predictably, the House will vote to impeach. What’s interesting is Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s suggestion, leaked to the press, that he may push for Trump’s impeachment and even pass a further resolution barring him from public office forever. The idea, according to media speculation, is that McConnell wants the GOP to move past Trump, who he faults for loss of the Republican Senate majority after Georgia’s special senate election.

Could the Republican party split in two? Maybe. Stay tuned.

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I got a new pair of Brooks running shoes. That was a happy day.

The shoes fit great, feel good and, if I may say so, they look pretty cool. They are gray, but jazzed up with a red swooshy thing.

They look like an action hero gear. For me, that’s perfect. The last thing I want is to get up in the dark and put on a pair of jet black running shoes. I need a little inspiration in my shoes.

The new shoes squeaked on our hardwood floors. I loved that. And they were solid, structured. They gave me needed support to save my knees from injury.

My old shoes were flattened, blown out and starting to fray.

The reminded me, given the recent news, of the country I live in.

Maybe that’s what the USA needs right now. A new pair of running shoes!